Crapcrapcrapcrap. Crap!

I am really annoyed.

Last night I got home, and fifteen minutes after walking in the door was asked to feed the cat. At which point I got the first nasty suprise of the day.

The cat's food was not the kind of food I'd asked my parents to get for her while I was away, and had specifically written down for them to buy.

This does not seem like that big of a deal, except that I'd spent the past two months before I left on vacation and a lot of my time and energy in gradually introducing her to the other diet, had explained to my parents why it was important that the cat kept eating the same food (she throws up less and eats more, which is important for a 16-year-old-cat), and knew that if the cat was going to undergo an operation in the near future--which I was going to spend my money on--that it was important that she be as healthy as possible, and had gotten accolades from the vet on getting her onto the food in the first place.

I got into something of a fight with my father about that. He said, "She likes that better. I thought we were doing what was best for the cat. Don't be angry at me. And don't be angry at your mother either."

Excuse me. I have a right to be frigging angry.

I said, "Well, I like chocolate better than cabbage; but that doesn't mean it's better for me. And you were wrong. That was not the best for the cat."

And then I went upstairs to try and calm myself down--I was tired, after all, and in no real state to think--and my computer was gone.

It hadn't been working right for the past few months--it wouldn't turn on some times, and it wouldn't turn off other times--but I couldn't figure out what was wrong and had no time to go digging to find it, so I had to let it be.

My dad mentioned it to me while I was in England, and said that he would have my cousin C. take a look at it (C. is a computer tech/repair guy). I said, "You don't use it anyway [my dad goes online once every six months, my mom uses the internet at work]. I will be home in two weeks. Don't do anything with it because all of my writing is on there and I don't have backups of the most recent stuff. Let me get home, make a CD, and then you can do whatever you want; in fact that would be great."

He said he wouldn't do anything with it until I got home.
Well, guess what.

I go back downstairs.

I am very quiet.

"Where is my computer?"
"C. has it."
"Why?"
"He's fixing it."
"I told you I wanted to make a backup when you talked to me about just it two weeks ago."
"We'd already done a little work on it before I talked to you and it still wasn't working so I took it to C."
"Oh."
A pause.
Dad: "C. has the hard drive, everything's ok."
"Well, that's good." Gee, I hope nothing happens to it! Because I didn't get a chance to get a backup made before you decided it was time to take my computer in without consulting me and then having the guts to lie about it by omission twice! "So what's wrong with it?"
"The motherboard is dead."
"Oh."
Another pause, where I can see large chunks of my money laughing at me and flying away to be put into a cat which will most likely soon die anyway of sheer old age and a computer that already has.
"It shouldn't take much to get a new one, right?"
"I don't know; I haven't looked at motherboards lately."
"Well, you'd better get a new one, else your computer is dead. Have you thought about getting a new computer?"

Well, yes, it's something I think about--but I was rather hoping I could wait and save up for six months until I got a well, you know, JOB in the new city I will be MOVING TO and not LIVING OFF MY SAVINGS while trying to pay for SURGERY for my CAT and after just paying for a NEW CAMERA which my old job STILL HAS NOT REIMBURSED ME FOR even though they screwed me over in THE FIRST PLACE!

That is what I very carefully did not yell at my father, especially after he implied that maybe I introduced static electricity into the computer after doing recent upgrades (I'd asked him if he had a static wrist strap; he'd said that I didn't need one. Ha. Ha. Weep.)

I said: "I don't know. Maybe it is worth looking into."

Now I have a lot of computer books and magazines and will go looking at the prices of motherboards at Best Buy and compare that to new computers which I can't afford and try to figure out if I really can give my cat surgery or if I should just let the lump sit there and take my chances and possibly kill my cat because I can't afford surgery right now like I saw so many people do when I worked at the vet hospital and promised I would never be one of them.

Oh and now I have only internet access through the library.

I hate this.